


Project Death

by arrow_in_your_heart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bad Writing, Death, Domestic Avengers, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), I'm Bad At Summaries, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, My First Fanfic, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Strong Female Characters, Violence, quarantine is making me go insane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arrow_in_your_heart/pseuds/arrow_in_your_heart
Summary: After being held captive in a HYDRA facility for years, (y/n) has all but forgotten everything about herself; knowing only that which is necessary for her own survival. When she is rescued by the Avengers, she struggles to adapt to life once again, and realises there may have been more to life than she ever thought possible.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	1. Missing Places

Footsteps.

You could hear footsteps.

You knew they were yours. You knew you were walking, because you could hear your own footsteps.

You knew where you were - the metallic stench of the facility stung your nose, working it’s way into your head and making your eyes water. You blinked away the fog that had suddenly come on, snapping yourself back the present. It wasn’t rare that you zoned out - living in your own head made everything a hell of a lot easier. In doing so you blinked away the droplets which formed in the corner of your eyes, barely noticing the mild discomfort - it was just a small nagging in the back of your head, one you couldn’t bring yourself to mind.

There wasn’t much more that you knew, and so you tried to keep a mental note of what you did know. One of those things was you knew that the list was getting smaller. You also knew that you didn’t know the time, whether it was day or night, didn’t know the date, or the year, or the name of the guard walking directly behind you (you could tell he was there because there was another set of footsteps not quite matching your own), or if you’ll be able to eat in the foreseeable future. 'Foreseeable' being irony.

You knew what irony meant, at least.

The rhythmic clank, clank, clank of the chain on your legs kept you focused as you walked. You did know it would be a while before you could walk again, and you revelled in the delicious ache deep in the muscles as you stretched each leg as far as it would willingly go. The pain from this was a comfortable, familiar pain. The burning became a constant - the only one you could depend on. It kept you grounded - whatever was happening, you knew the burning would still be there.

A sudden jerk to the chain on your arm and you were halted abruptly, your weight on one foot as the other hovered mid-step. Another jerk, and you were turning to your right; a large metal door now looming above you. You knew this was your Room.

The keypad next to the door lit up when you were stood opposite it, the individual keys glowing with a florescent blue light so harsh that you had to force yourself not to look away, or blink.

You couldn’t show weakness.

It wasn’t as if you could tear your gaze away, though - the colour always filled you with an alien emotion, one you couldn’t place if you tried (and you had, for hours, with nothing else to do after being left in The Room). It was as if you remembered it… which was ridiculous, right?

The guard punched a combination in - different to the last time - and the mocking blue turned to a cruel green. He reached around you to twist the doorknob which had appeared after the light changed, his arm brushing your side for a split second too long.

He was new.

With a creak, the door swung open and you were shoved inside, stumbling unceremoniously before managing to righten yourself. A faint snap echoed around the room and blood rushed back into your hands, tingling, as the chains fell. You turned now to face the man, eyes angled downwards, taking two measured steps backwards until your back hit the wall. You held your hands out to either side, not even bothering to raise your head to see the power-hungry smirk the guard would have on his face now.

Cold rushed through your stomach as you felt the harsh metal encase your fist again, this time holding it against the wall. You were used to this - didn’t know anything else - yet a small part of you, hidden in the far recesses of your mind, remained terrified, and it threatened to grow each time you heard the metal snap. You were reminded of this as your other hand faced the same doom, and you were left to swallow the feeling before it could establish itself into something more.

You couldn’t afford to panic.

Your ankles were given the same treatment, and it wasn’t long before the man reached up to push your shirt up, the concrete wall behind you grazing scarred skin as your only layer of protection was withdrawn.

The friendly burn from your limbs was now drowned out by the harsher, newer burn enveloping your torso - the cool metal casing pressing you further into the wall, your personal coffin now your battle armour. Your shirt was yanked messily back over the top, hiding the miniature prison from view, and you had to choke back a whimper when you remembered what would be coming next. The fear always became almost impossible to ignore by this point.

The guard noticed your gulp, and the way your eyes screwed shut, and he tilted his thin mouth into an evil grin once again as he drew himself to his full height (which, you noted, was not very high).He opened his mouth to speak, a foul stench reaching your senses nearly making you gag, but was interrupted by an echoing yell, and a crash, from somewhere in the facility.You could feel old scars on your back reopen as your subsequent flinch made you press yourself further into the wall. He closed his mouth (to the relief of your poor nose) and turned his head with a roll of his eyes to glance out the open door behind him, muttering under his breath something about needing a better defence system.

You weren't paying attention to anything he said, too busy trying to frantically figure out the source of the noise, your heartbeat increasing steadily as your mind began to race, each rise and fall of your chest bringing a fresh level of pain as more skin was pressed against the metal corset. You had barely noticed when the guard turned back around, pushing greasy hair back from his face, and was now reaching for The Mask.

You didn’t react as he placed it over your head, the metal stinging where it rested on the crown of your head and bruised cheek bones, and instead focused on pacing your breaths. Your vision was now obscured by small metal bars running over your eyes, and you bared your teeth as you saw rather than felt the guard patting the side of your cheek, the metal leaving a hollow echo bouncing around your skull.

Another crash echoed through the halls - closer this time than the last, and a mix of fear and fury finally rushed through your veins. Upon hearing it, the guard’s gaze hardened, and he placed his face directly opposite yours, barking commands and reiterating orders of what to do in an emergency, lest you had forgotten. You, however, were not listening - couldn’t even hear him over the rushing sound in your ears - and instead focused on bringing your head, heavy mask and all, down onto his with as much strength you could muster.

He hadn’t put your neck harness on yet, and now he was unconscious on the floor.

Fear flooded through your system, unchallenged by the retreating rage.

Oh god, what had you done?

You now noticed, though your vision was still severely limited, that the alarms had sounded and every room was swallowed in a pulsating red, one which invaded your mind and chased out any emotion, any thought, other than pure terror.

The door to The Room still was wide open, and the guard you had dropped lay in full view of the corridor, just waiting for someone to discover.

This time you allowed the whimper to escape your throat as you desperately wished that the punishment for this would be death.

You just couldn’t face the testing any longer.

A second muffled cry joined it as you allowed yourself to dwell on the possibility that no one would find out - no one would pass by and see that you were still trapped in the room. You would be abandoned completely, starving and rotting away into nothing but the shell your mind had already become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! if you've made it this far, I just want to say a huge thank you for checking it out!  
> Sorry for the short chapter, I think the first few will be similar lengths while I figure out the tone of the story and get into the groove of it more.  
> Please, constructive criticise the shit out of it! I haven't done any writing in such a long time and I'm always looking to improve!  
> also ngl please don't expect super regular updates, I'm a depressed uni student and notoriously unreliable lmao can't wait to promise posting next week and leaving y'all hanging for a few years xx  
> btw I think I posted this a while back on my Tumblr anon-and-gone but I never got past chapter 1 so lets see how far we get this time yeet  
> hope you enjoy the shit show!  
> Arrow x


	2. Where Things Once Lost Are Found

You couldn’t tell how much time had past - be it a few seconds, a few minutes, or even hours since you had scrunched your eyes as tightly closed as they would go, hardly allowing yourself to breathe as the constant searing because almost too much to bare. The alarms had been disabled at some point, and the noises and constant yelling had settled down, allowing an uncomfortably heavy silence to descend upon the room - save your ragged wheezing.

You couldn’t remember the last time it had been this quiet.

You had retreated so far back into your mind that you almost didn’t notice the new set of footsteps. When you did, however, panic clenched your chest painfully enough to cease your breathing entirely before you pushed it to the back of your mind, swallowing your fear while keeping your eyes pinched shut.

There was a lull in the rhythmic thuds of the approaching steps every few moments, you supposed to check the neighbouring rooms for for signs of life, or a threat. _Oh, what a shock they’ll get when they find you, a_ small voiced rasped in the back of your head with dry laughter. You buried it. You knew the other rooms would be empty - most of the facility had been cleared over the last few weeks, with surviving ‘projects’ shipped off to be of greater use at another location. You had stayed put; your greatest use being where you are right now. Your one mission was to do the impossible. Your one purpose was to touch the untouchable.

Kill the Avengers.

You couldn't have been ready for that yet, though, and were still facing tests twice a week to see how far your skills could be stretched. Sure, you had completed your hand-to-hand training a while ago, and your weapons master had signed you off recently, but no one had said anything about the tests letting up. you would be due for one soon, you were sure - it had been a while since the last one...

You blinked hard to try and clear your head, you couldn't afford to zone out again. Not before you knew what you were up against. You distantly wondered if this was another test. If it were you’d definitely be punished monumentally for doing nothing, for knocking out the guard. The fresh shot of fear that you felt burning through your veins was almost enough to make you do something, anything.

Though that tiny, tiny voice at the back of your head wouldn’t shut off, and allowed you to consider that it might not be a test at all.

Maybe you could leave.

You caught yourself before you shook your head, not willing to sear your cheekbones even more, instead clenching your eyes shut even tighter in an attempt to banish the idea. Ridiculous, you chided yourself. Why can't you just focus? You can’t afford those thoughts.

Distracted by your own futile attempts at concentration, you almost missed how loud the footsteps had now become, and a wave of nausea settled deep in your belly when you realised they couldn’t be more than a few metres away.

You held your breath. maybe if you were still enough they wouldn’t notice you.

A dark figure, the owner of the footsteps, now stood outside your open door. Their back was turned - trying to open the door opposite yours. They wouldn’t succeed, of course. In all your time here you had never seen anyone use any door on this level besides yours. In fact, you had only ever seen a handful of doors ever being used - the one to the bathroom every morning which then lead to a door to the Handler, then one to the training room on the floor above, and one on the floor below…

You weren’t allowed to dwell. The figure was turning around. Did you make a sound? Did they hear you? The figure - the man - gasped, and ran forward, and you felt a wave of terror like you’ve never felt before, bracing yourself for more pain.

But it never came.

instead, he had run forward to the guard’s head, which had landed about halfway between the door and your feet as he fell backwards. He checked for a pulse, and lifted his head to look back out the door to yell something. You couldn't focus on what was said. There was that tiny kernel of hope again - but you weren’t sure why you were hopeful. Did you want him to miss you? To keep on walking and leave you here? Or did you want him to see you? What if this was your shot at freedom?

Freedom. The word reverberated around your skull like an angry hornet. It stung, so much, to think about. The more you thought about it the further away it seemed - it was no longer an option for you, but still it dangled like a loose wire in the back of your mind, waiting for you to yank on it, a thought so tantalisingly delicious you couldn’t bare not having just another look…

It turns out you didn’t get much choice. He lifted his head, and his mouth fell open.

Oh no.

You knew that face. You could never forget that face. It haunted your waking thoughts as much as your nightmares, and now it was walking towards you.

Any thoughts or hopes of freedom evaporated like sweat off your skin.

You cut the wire.

His hand reached for your wrist as his head turned towards the door again, yelling more frantically. A fresh bout of panic sent new adrenaline coursing through your veins, and before he could touch you, you tried to bring your head down upon his as you did with the guard, snarling in defence and trying so desperately to tug and free yourself from the iron chains. He back-pedalled and you missed his head, your neck wrenching from the weight of your mask as the momentum dragged it forwards, then down.

This winded you briefly, and you let your head hang as you caught your breath. You tried to use your breathing to calm you, to ground you as you were taught, but all it succeeded in doing was focusing you on the very real possibility that you could die. You could die right fucking now, or you could complete your task and then die anyway. No one was coming to rescue you. Your fate had been shoved mercilessly into the hands of the one person you were destined to kill. You forced your head upwards despite the air not settled in your lungs, and made yourself look him in the face.

He was moving his mouth, but no sounds were coming out. The only thing you could hear over your racing heart and the blood rushing in your ears was a faint clinking, which you soon realised to be the clamps at your limbs from where you were shaking violently. All you wanted to know was why Captain America was now stood in front of you.

You weren’t ready for this.

_He looked older than the pictures._

Phantom shocks of pain spread through your chest - echoes from a test close to when you were captured - weeks, months, or years ago you weren’t sure. Pictures of your future targets accompanied with volts of electricity jolting through you.

You hadn’t noticed the second set of footsteps, and your fear now overwhelmed you to complete stillness when you saw the Black Widow standing behind him, staring straight towards you with a slightly agape mouth.

Her perfect, perfect face was furrowed with… something, and she reached a slender arm towards you. She was speaking, you knew that, though you still couldn’t hear over the rushing in your ears. She took a step forward, and another, and another, until she was next to you, and you could feel her breath and the heat of her skin even through the Mask, and still you couldn’t move. You didn’t even twitch when she kneeled down, when you felt the bitter air kiss your right ankle, and then your left. You instead kept your gaze fixed on Captain America, as he seemed as unsure what to do as you. In your peripheral you could see the red hair move upwards, now unclasping your wrists one after the other. You - still utterly petrified - didn’t bring them down to your sides, instead keeping them spread across the wall as they _should_ be. The blond broke your eye contact, his shifting to where his friend was for a fraction of a second while she figured out exactly what the Mask was. You faintly supposed they had never seen one. You weren’t sure whether you pitied their cluelessness or envied it.

Frigid air hit the top of your neck as you felt the stinging shift and drag up your face, though you didn’t close your eyes against the pain this time, you didn’t pay it any mind. You watched them both as they watched the Mask fall to the floor, and kept watching them as they raised their eyes to take in your full state, brimming with an emotion you could only guess was contempt. What else could they possibly be feeling? They must’ve read the files HYDRA had kept about you if they had managed to get this close to you, and you certainly knew they wouldn’t let you live if they had read them. So they must be here to kill you.

So why weren’t they moving?

The silence grew thick and heavy once more while the three of you were analysing each other. Daring each other to make the first move, no one had so much as twitched.

The Captain was the first to break stillness, reaching an arm out and murmuring to you like you were an injured animal. His eyes flicked towards the spy for a heartbeat, and he took a step forward.

It was as if a switch had flicked in your mind.

Your mind went blank, training taking over as you lunged for him.

All you could think was _kill._

_Kill._

_Kill._

You didn't feel the needle jab into your neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 complete! Hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it :)
> 
> No idea how long the next chapter will be I'm afraid, I'm in the process of editing it now but I have so many assignments due this week *sigh* I'll aim to get it posted on Saturday! hoping if I come up with a regular schedule I'll actually try and follow it lmao
> 
> You may still be confused about a lot in this chapter, I promise things will be made more clear in chapters to come! its meant to be confusing to start with and we're with reader as she starts to make sense of her life :)
> 
> Once again, any constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged! have a nice day :)  
> -Arrow x


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